lotnictwo: Confuciusornis

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Confuciusornis is a genus of basal crow-sized avialan confuciusornithid theropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Period of the Yixian and Jiufotang Formations of China, dating from 125 to 120 million years ago. Like modern birds, Confuciusornis had a toothless beak, but closer and later relatives of modern birds such as Hesperornis and Ichthyornis were toothed, indicating that the loss of teeth occurred convergently in Confuciusornis and living birds. It was thought to be the oldest known bird to have a beak, though this title now belongs to an earlier relative Eoconfuciusornis. It was named after the Chinese moral philosopher Confucius (551–479 BC). Confuciusornis is one of the most abu…

Evidence: 63 • authority: 72

Eoconfuciusornis a genus of extinct avialan that lived 131 Ma ago, in the Early Cretaceous of China. It is the oldest known bird to have a beak. The type species of Eoconfuciusornis, Eoconfuciusornis zhengi, was named and described by Fucheng Zhang, Zhou Zhonghe and Michael Benton in 2008. The generic name combines a Greek ἠώς, eos, "dawn", with the name of the related genus Confuciusornis. The specific name honours Zheng Guangmei. The holotype, specimen IVPP V11977, was found near Sichakou in Fengning in Hebei province. Its provenance the Sichakou Beds are part of the Dabeigou Formation which was seen by the describers as dating to the Hauterivian, and were thought to be about 131 million…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 72

Birds are vertebrate animals constituting the class Aves, characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. They are warm-blooded, live worldwide, and range in size from the 5.5 cm (2.2 in) bee hummingbird to the 2.8 m (9 ft 2 in) common ostrich. There are over 11,000 living species of birds, classified in 44 orders. More than half of the world's bird species are passerine or "perching" birds. Nearly all birds have wings whose development varies according to the life style of each species. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 92

Chemical mapping of paleontological and archeological artifacts with synchrotron X-rays.. The application of the recently developed synchrotron rapid scanning X-ray fluorescence (SRS-XRF) technique to the mapping of large objects is the focus of this review. We discuss the advantages of SRS-XRF over traditional systems and the use of other synchrotron radiation (SR) techniques to provide corroborating spectroscopic and diffraction analyses during the same analytical session. After reviewing routine techniques used to analyze precious specimens, we present several case studies that show how SR-based methods have been successfully applied in archeology and paleontology. For example, SRS-XRF i…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 92

Avian features of <i>Archaeopteryx</i> feeding apparatus reflect elevated demands of flight.. Powered flight, as the most physically demanding form of vertebrate locomotion, involves elevated energetic demands. The appearance of dinosaurian flight should therefore be associated with novel features related to increased feeding or digestive efficiency. Neornithines have several unique rostral features that facilitate complex oral tasks, increasing feeding efficiency; these include a mechanoreceptive bill-tip organ, highly mobile tongue, and oral papillae. Here, we provide the first evidence for the presence of these features in Archaeopteryx , the oldest known avian dinosaur. Larg…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Asteriornis ("Asteria's bird") is an extinct genus of bird from the Late Cretaceous of Belgium which is known from a single species, Asteriornis maastrichtensis. It was a small, long-legged bird that lived near the coastline and co-existed with more "primitive" types of birds such as Ichthyornis. Asteriornis is one of the oldest-known birds irrefutably belonging to the group Neornithes, which encompasses all modern birds, and is possibly closely related to birds of the extant superorder Galloanserae such as chickens and ducks. It possesses characteristics of both galliformes (chicken-like birds) and anseriformes (duck-like birds), indicating its position as a close relative of the last comm…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Molecular evidence of keratin and melanosomes in feathers of the Early Cretaceous bird Eoconfuciusornis.. Microbodies associated with feathers of both nonavian dinosaurs and early birds were first identified as bacteria but have been reinterpreted as melanosomes. Whereas melanosomes in modern feathers are always surrounded by and embedded in keratin, melanosomes embedded in keratin in fossils has not been demonstrated. Here we provide multiple independent molecular analyses of both microbodies and the associated matrix recovered from feathers of a new specimen of the basal bird Eoconfuciusornis from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota of China. Our work represents the oldest ultrastructural an…